Alchemical Vistas

I capture, construct, and augment small sights in the world for the creation of sublime landscapes. My subjects include small tableaus and wide panoramas found in nature, as well as dioramas I form out of mundane materials in the studio. Petroleum jelly, insulation foam, melted plastic, and more fills my sets. I aspire to create imagery that is extraordinary but believable, initially. At first sight, I desire the viewer to interpret the work as a factual window into a grand view in the world. For that time, they are allowed a sublime moment. They become the ruckenfigur: a German term for a person in 19th century Romantic painting that stands before an immense vista. Confronted with the mystery, power, and overwhelming immensity of the wild world before them, they are allowed to exist in a moment of heightened awareness of their relation to the vast and magisterial natural world they exist in. As they come closer to the work, their attention is rewarded by discovering that there is more than what first met the eye, and that the work is the concretized vision of the artist’s personal ideality.